Donald Trump changed the political game.

Trump's inflammatory statements and proposals — to ban Muslims from entering the US, or saying the Mexican government sends its "rapists" across the border — have only served to embolden his supporters. At the end of December, Trump had a sizable lead over other Republican candidates, with 39% of GOP support, according to a nationwide CNN/ORC poll.

The rising support is not due to a lack of reprimand from the media or the public — even members of his own party have condemned his remarks. But unlike other politicians who reverse course and apologize for their blunders, Trump has stuck to his guns and not changed, or apologized for, his opinions. He says exactly what he thinks and feels and this, perhaps, could be his Trump card.

ISIS became a more powerful and deadly terror threat.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Attacks led by affiliates of the terrorist group ISIS in Paris in November that left 130 people dead, as well as the takedown of a Russian airliner in October that killed all 224 people on board, were among a number of "lone-wolf" terror attacks have made ISIS public terror enemy No. 1.

Feelings of alienation and a rift among Sunni and Shiite communities in Iraq and Syria, as well as chaos in Syria and other political turmoil in the Middle East, gave the terrorist group a hand in gaining momentum in 2015, and even in recruiting people from the UK, the US, and other countries.

The US has made fighting Islamic extremist forces like ISIS and other terrorist groups a priority since September 11. And other countries like Egypt, Syria, France, the UK, and Russia are now banding together to dismantle a violent organization.

We came closer than ever to editing human DNA.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

This year, scientists used CRISPR/Cas9 — a gene-editing tool that uses a "find-and-replace" technique to replace faulty genes with potentially healthier ones — to modify genes in pigs to make their organs viable for transplants into humans. What sets CRISPR apart from other gene-editing tools is that CRISPR is easier and less expensive to use than tools of the past.

CRISPR has also been used to edit the genes in mice that were genetically predisposed to muscular dystrophy, and to make super-muscular beagles. It has major potential to edit out genetic diseases from humans, and by 2017 scientists will use it to try to treat human adults with a rare form of blindness.

The only potential downside is that editing a gene out of one species could have unintended consequences on another — for example, if we edited mosquito DNA to prevent the species from spreading dengue fever to humans, but accidentally transferred the modified gene to a related species and wiped it out.

People are making a living off of their football dream teams.

Stephan Savoia/AP

Daily fantasy sports sites and apps like Draft Kings and FanDuel make it easier for sports fans (particularly football fans) to create their ideal teams and bet money on them.

Some DFS players have been known to earn into the six figures in this way, prompting federal and state action to prevent fantasy sports betting from becoming an even bigger industry.

In 2015, nearly 57 million people in the US and Canada will play fantasy sports — a 37% increase from last year. Some professional DFS players (about 1% of the pool) even make their living off of the industry, earning more playing fantasy sports than they did in their last jobs.

The deal puts a huge portion of the world's beer market under the same umbrella: The AB InBev-SABMiller union now has an estimated global market share of close to 30% after divestitures, and it controls six of the 10 most popular beer brands in America.

AB InBev has also been snatching up craft breweries left and right; in the last year, the beer goliath bought out US-based 10 Barrel, Blue Point, Elysian, and Goose Island; more recently, it also purchased Breckenridge Brewery and Four Peaks Brewing, and UK-based Camden Town Brewery — all within the span of five days.

...and the world's largest pharmaceutical company.

The merger will allow Pfizer to pay lower taxes when it moves its headquarters from the US to Ireland, where Allergan is located. The merger would top even AB InBev's $108 billion acquisition of SABMiller to become the largest merger of the year.

A brand-new era of space exploration began.

Blue Origin

Space travel hasn't seen so much excitement since humans landed on the moon. This year, a new kind of space race began with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos engaging in some friendly one-upsmanship between their two private spaceflight companies: SpaceX (Musk) and Blue Origin (Bezos).

In November, Blue Origin successfully launched and landed its New Shepard reusable rocket system; SpaceX, meanwhile, successfully launched and landed its own Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral in December.

Both Bezos' and Musk's involvement in private commercial spaceflight leads a new trend in tech billionaires seeking to become the first to the final frontier.

Gun violence became the norm in the US.

Investigators examine evidence at the scene where two suspects were shot by police following a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, December 3, 2015.REUTERS/Mike Blake

"This is not normal. We can't let it become normal," President Obama said of the frequency of gun-related incidents in the US in the wake of the November shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood. "If we truly care about this ... then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them."

A mass shooting at a social-services agency in San Bernardino, California, left 14 people dead at the beginning of December. Other shootings have occurred at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, at a Navy-Marine training facility in Tennessee, and at a historic black church in South Carolina, among others.

We reached an Iran nuclear deal.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L), Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (R), and others meet at the Beau Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, on March 26, 2015.REUTERS/Brendan Smialowski

In July, the US and some of its international partners reached a deal that would effectively limit Iran's pathway to nuclear weapons. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reduces Iran's supply of enriched uranium — one of the key ingredients in developing nuclear weapons — and number of installed centrifuges, as well as increasing the amount of time it would take for Iran to make a bomb from two or three months to a year.

The historic deal took nearly two years of negotiations to reach, and so far Iran seems to be upholding its end of the bargain: Reuters reported in December that more than 25,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium bound for Russia left Iran, reducing the country's supply of the material.

Liquid water was found on Mars.

At the end of September, NASA confirmed that scientists have identified dark streaks on the surface of Mars as flowing salt water — the best evidence so far that the red planet could support life.

Scientists have suspected for a while that water flows on Mars, and had first discovered the dark streaks back in 2010, but it wasn't until this year that NASA confirmed the dark streaks are water.

“It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future,” said NASA’s Mars Exploration Program lead scientist Michael Meyer in a press release.

Before this year, a number of US states had already legalized same-sex marriage, but in June the US Supreme Court ruled that two people, regardless of gender, could marry anywhere in the country. The US's historic ruling, which had been an important topic of discussion among lawmakers for years, followed Ireland's ruling for same-sex marriage the month before. Finland legalized same-sex marriage this year, as well, but it goes into effect in 2017.

In December, Slovenia also voted gay marriage into effect, becoming the first ex-communist country to do so. As more countries warm up to the idea of marriage equality, it shows that a shift is finally occurring in the way people define marriage.

Americans' love of bacon hit a major road block.

In October, a paper published by the World Health Organization cited "sufficient evidence in human beings for the carcinogenicity of the consumption of processed meat." In layman's terms, processed meat causes cancer.

Among the most guilty culprits are bacon, ham, sausage, and hamburgers. The WHO did not find enough definitive proof that red meat in general causes cancer, but the same paper said that it probably is carcinogenic, disappointing many Americans who make red and processed meats a large part of their diets (but confirming long-time suspicions of a link between red meat and colorectal cancer).

Lucasfilm released the first new movie from the "Star Wars" saga in a decade.

Disney

In November 2013 Disney announced that it would be making a seventh "Star Wars" film, and that it would debut on December 18, 2015. The sequel to "Return of the Jedi," "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" earned a domestic total of $600 million in the first 11 days since it hit theaters, according to The Hollywood Reporter, making it the highest-grossing film in the "Star Wars" franchise.

Not only was the arrival of the seventh film historic in that series creator George Lucas originally told fans not to expect any more "Star Wars" movies after "Revenge of the Sith," but the film's cast is more diverse than in past movies, with a woman (Daisy Ridley) and a Nigerian Brit (John Boyega) in two of the leading roles.

A transportation company became the most valuable private tech company in the world.

Uber operates in more than 300 cities and nearly 60 countries. While the company is working to overcome regulatory hurdles, Uber has its sights set on plans bigger than just chauffeured transportation. The company has rolled out features like UberEATS and UberRush to test out logistics and delivery services. In May, Uber poached 40 Carnegie Mellon robotics researchers for its own Pittsburgh-based labs. Presumably, this will help Uber to create self-driving cars.

The world's first "pharma bro" made us seriously question the morality of drug companies.

Martin Shkreli is escorted out of 26 Federal Plaza in New York City by law-enforcement officials following his arrest.Andrew Burton/Getty Images News

Doubts over big pharmaceutical companies' morality is not a new issue, but "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli, formerly the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals and KaloBios, claimed a new level of attention this year when he raised the price of antiparasitic drug Daraprim from $13.50 per pill to $750 a pill — an increase of about 5,000%.

While Shkreli has received a ton of media coverage for price-gouging issues in big pharma (likely due to his lavish and attention-seeking lifestyle), he's certainly not the only one responsible for the issue and, if anything, the attention he's received has exposed the need for balance between the needs of patients and drug companies.

McDonald's launched all-day breakfast.

Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

McDonald's made a number of dramatic changes this year, the most exciting (and longest-awaited) probably being the launch of its all-day breakfast menu.

New CEO Steve Easterbrook, who took the helm of McDonald's in March, revealed a detailed turnaround plan for the fast-food chain to revive lagging sales and improve the company's image. Customers have been demanding McMuffins and McGriddles available after 10:30 a.m., when breakfast used to stop, for a long time; in March, their demands were met.

The company also started being more transparent about its production process, switched to cage-free eggs, and improved the quality of many of its ingredients.

GMO salmon became the world's first genetically modified animal product approved for consumption by the FDA.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

After nearly two decades of debate, the US Food and Drug Administrationdetermined that humans can safely consume AquAdvantage Salmon, dubbed "Frankenfish" by critics — a genetically-modified (GM) fish that can grow much faster than wild or conventional Atlantic salmon thanks to added genes that produce more flesh.

And while it's safe for humans to eat and non-harmful for fish to produce, regulations abound: The GM salmon can only be raised in contained land-based hatchery tanks in two facilities in Canada and Panama, and to prevent the salmon from escaping and spreading possible disease the sterile fish must be contained with physical barriers.

In new guidelines that accompanied the approval, the FDA offered a draft for companies opting to label any GM-foods — with the exception of "Frankenfish" — as “food derived from genetically engineered plants."

Scientists discovered one of the most Earth-like planets yet that might have the right conditions for life.

NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

A team of NASA, SETI, and Cambridge University scientists discovered this summer that an Earth-like planet with the potential for human life is orbiting a sun-like star 1,400 light-years away. They're calling it Kepler 452b, or Earth 2.0.

While this long-awaited discovery has striking similarities to our home planet including a rocky surface and a 385-day orbit around a sun, it's a much more mature version — about 1.5 billion years older and 60% larger, to be exact.

Kepler 452b has scientists excited about finding life elsewhere in our galaxy, but now they'll have to wait, possibly decades, for the next generation of telescopes to find out if there's even water on the surface of Earth 2.0. Still, July's discovery was a major advancement in the race to find alien life.

The government proposed the first sea-change to American diets in decades.

The Food and Drug Administration reaffirmed this year what we already know about the negative effects of too much added sugar on our bodies — it's not good. In November, the organization offered a recommended daily cap for the first time of 50 grams of added sugar, which is typically found in sweetened drinks and processed foods like snack bars and bread.

For years, dietary restrictions on sugar have been focused on preventing weight gain, but now new research suggests that high-sugar diets can promote chronic disease by causing inflammation, insulin resistance, and hypertension, the Times reports.

In an effort to help Americans choose foods with less added sugars, the FDA proposed a change to nutrition labels that clearly distinguishes the difference between added sugars and natural sugars, which can be found in fresh fruit and milk and are OK to consume along with proper amounts of fiber, protein, and other nutrients to balance it out.

According to Fortune's Dan Primack, investors have recognized several years of raising "too much, too high, too soon," resulting in a shift toward more conservative investor ethos. Needless to say, it was a tumultuous year for venture capital, which is likely still undervalued in the public sector but arguably overvalued in the private sector.

Several of these restaurants plan to cut artificial coloring and preservatives and GMOs to meet industry demands and regain consumer confidence in a time where transparency begets value. These changes will more than likely pave the way for a new generation of fast-food consumption; projected trends for 2016 include revamped value menus, delivery options, tech-savvy ordering, and ultimately, a new definition of healthy.

Hoverboards took over America in a matter of months.

If you haven't ridden a hoverboard, received one of the tens of thousands that were gifted over the holidays, or at least heard about the Chinese toy's tendency to spontaneously combust, then you've probably been living under a rock. Arguably the hottest toy craze of the year was the "self-balancing scooter" that retails on Amazon for anywhere between $250 and $1,500 and debuted at Walmart stores in November.

Despite their popularity, these two-wheeled electronic scooters haven't had a smooth ascent into mainstream culture. This fall, New York City deemed hoverboards illegal and said offenders would be charged a $200 fine, and in December, Buzzfeed reported that the UK government had seized over 32,000 dangerous hoverboards out of 38,800 that have been inspected at UK entry points. And this Christmas, the drama came to a head when social media erupted with hundreds of #hoverboardfail videos, many of which ended in hospital visits.

Fashion companies are shying away from using rail-thin models in their ads.

This year, consumers noticed a significant increase in the number of plus-sized models in print campaigns while publishers and pioneering fashion companies like Aerie lingerie made headlines after forgoing airbrushing or retouching of models, a move that translated to an 18% sales increase for Aerie in the second quarter of 2015.

The refugee crisis in Europe became the worst since World War II.

REUTERS/Stringer

The European refugee crisis entered the global spotlight this year. By September, the number of mostly Syrian, Afghan, and Somalian refugees entering Europe had reached more than half a million over the course of 10 months and because Eurozone leaders have been slow to respond. It's been deemed the worst refugee crisis facing the world since WWII.

EU countries have responded to the crisis in different ways. Germany has said it will spend $6.6 billion to cope with the 800,000 migrants and refugees it expected through the end of 2015, France has committed to taking 24,000 migrants over two years, and Spain agreed to take in an extra 15,000 people as part of the EU's quota plan.

Racial tensions in the US are mirroring the 1960s civil rights era.

REUTERS/Marisa Helms

Racial tension is no new issue in America, but incidents this year have reinstated the high level of political and cultural strife that divided the nation for more than a decade in the 1950s and 1960s.

Following several killings and high-profile court cases, new campaigns reminding people that #BlackLivesMatter and a crackdown on cops targeting — and sometimes killing — minorities have emerged this year.